Gun Debate Megathread V1: My country is better than yours

[Thelurker1234]

[QUOTE=MrDwarf11;51445114]what're your guy's thoughts on a govt backed 100% free "Looky here, I'm not an idiot with a gun" license that grants you access to all types of guns?[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't really say all types with one license. I think pretty much every gun should be own-able but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have to go through some bureaucracy for some of them.

[Crooky01]

Seeing the thread title like: OHH LAWD :ohno:

[Pops]

[QUOTE=Crooky14;51445294]Seeing the thread title like: OHH LAWD :ohno:[/QUOTE]

I'm just lurking, anything I would have said has already been said.

[.𓃉𓁿𓂎𓁿𓃉.]

[QUOTE=mdeceiver79;51444087]Only necessary because all the criminals have guns because guns are so easy to get.

So you can either solve issues with poverty and crime or mitigate the damage done by controlling gun ownership. The US isn't doing anything to solve poverty so controlling guns seems to be sensible. A criminal with a gun is going to do far more damage than a criminal with a knife.[/quote]

controlling guns, especially when there is as much saturation as there is, is likely more difficult than working on solving poverty. i have yet to see a gun control scheme which would be both effective and viable to implement.

[quote]You got a point here about nukes but the police use armoured vehicles so my point still stands.

The government doesn't do this because they are not tyrannical, if the government didn't care about PR then guns wouldn't save you, army defection would be you're only hope.

Other countries seem to be stable without every man and his dog having a gun. Maybe this is disingenuous though since the cat is already out of the bag and any effort to control gun ownership would just end up with black market stuff.[/quote]

other countries may be stable now but stability is quite fragile. you cannot predict what may happen in the future and depending on stability to stay forever would be a mistake.

beside that, you missed my point. the government would be very hesitant to engage the populace in armed conflict as the government has far more to lose than a people who are willing to revolt do. as the US is the major player on the world stage, it has far more to worry about than Libya or Egypt did. if the US government had the threat of an armed revolt on the horizon, it is far more likely to concede before it gets to a war than choose to fight that war.

[Fulcrum]

[QUOTE=catbarf;51444497]I can't provide statistical evidence for events that didn't happen, only examples of events where it occurred, and even that involves some speculation as to the motives of the shooter. At the [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clackamas_Town_Center_shooting"]Clackamas Town Center shooting[/URL], a concealed carrier confronted the shooter and forced him to retreat before he took his own life. In Chicago last year, an Uber driver [URL="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-uber-driver-shoots-gunman-met-0420-20150419-story.html"]stopped a would-be mass shooter[/URL]. Of course, it didn't even make national news. I'll admit that these are basically speculative and anecdotal because, again, it's hard to draw useful conclusions about things that didn't happen, but they're far from a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence.

As for the presence of a gun acting as a deterrent, see below.

'People target those places because they're busy' falls apart when you consider that the Aurora shooter chose the [I]only[/I] theater in a several-block radius that bans CC, and the [I]overwhelming[/I] majority of school shootings have occurred on campuses that ban firearms and don't have permanent security. There are plenty of colleges, theaters, malls, and other businesses in the US that allow concealed carry, and there are plenty of high schools with permanent police security, so it would be a remarkable coincidence that they are almost never targeted by mass shooters just by happenstance. Off the top of my head, the only recent example was the Umpqua community college. Beyond that, despite having comparable population density to gun-free counterparts, they remain shooting-free.
[/quote]
Correlation != causation. Might have been a different factor ie guns are often controlled in places with gun violence as a consequence rather than a cause.

[quote]
Yep, that's exactly the point. Police breaking up a protest with riot batons doesn't get international attention. Police opening fire on an armed protest and a gunfight breaking out in the streets sure does. I'm not sure why you think bringing up Arab Spring helps your argument, considering the armed insurrection underpinning both the Egyptian and Libyan revolutions started with government forces using lethal force on civilians, both goading the populace into action and making their servicemen have second thoughts about firing on their own people. The military is much more likely to rebel when they're being directed to kill their fellow countrymen than when they're sitting in a depot while the police detain dissidents.[/quote]
I believe that the populace being armed (and the government up arming its response to protest) is less likely to protests being broken up with riot batons though, so protests less likely to turn into firefights if the populace don't have guns, so more stable since a protest won't turn into a revolution. Imo a protest should remain peaceful and shouldn't escalate into violence, if it does escalate to violence then it certainly shouldn't escalate to deadly violence.

[quote]
Keep in mind that the mental shorthand of 'tyrannical government' doesn't necessarily mean a government with absolute power, totally immune to political pressure, just one with enough power to start to disregard the rights protected under the Constitution. And even in the case of a totally tyrannical government, the loyalty of the military and international support are not guaranteed.
[/quote]
Imo the deciding factor in revolution is loyalty of the army not whether or not the populace has guns. The populace having guns (thus prompting violent response rather than none violent response to unrest) serves only to destabilise things. I guess this would be the macro whereas self defence against a villain would be the micro.

[quote]
This somewhat goes hand-in-hand with the 'tyrannical government' issue. Forcible disarmament is historically often a prelude to abuses of power, and retaining ownership of banned guns is considered an act of civil disobedience. Again, this ties in with the balance of power- not giving the government that shopping list makes mass confiscation essentially a non-starter. Is it a more paranoid or unreasonable fear, sure, especially since as I said the NICS database tracks transfers. But when there are no redeeming qualities to a registry, any legitimate criticism, no matter how speculative or outlandish, is enough justification to oppose registries.
[/quote]
Depends how you pick your precedents. In most european countries where guns were once legal there were disarmament programs which went ok. Sorry to keep banging on about UK but we've been mostly gun free for a while (there was a handgun ban a decade back but that was HEAVILY controlled even before that) We're not tyrannical despite how hard our pm is trying to be.

[quote]
Actually, no, cities are often where police response time is over 30 mins, thanks to booming populations and underfunded police. As of one year ago, in fact, police response times in New Orleans (a major city) averaged [URL="http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2015/10/new_orleans_police_response_ti.html"]over an hour[/URL]. That's not even the worst in the country. And it doesn't even take something like Katrina or the LA Riots to completely shut down police activity. During the Ferguson protests, which were localized and relatively civil, police were unavailable to respond to calls and business owners were on their own to protect their livelihoods.[/quote]
Sad that the police are so underfunded that people need to have a gun to protect themselves.

[quote]
Furthermore, police officers in the US have [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_v._District_of_Columbia"]no obligation to protect the populace[/URL]. The legal system explicitly states that the purpose of police is to arrest criminals, and if citizens want to avoid being victimized it's up to them. When police officers show up too late, or refuse to intervene in a home invasion out of fear for the officers' safety, why would anyone rely on them for protection?
[/quote]
This part is just sickening. Your police seem very underwhelming.

[quote]
Nah. I mean sure, the fact that criminals are armed does imply the use of firearms as a tool for effective self-defense, although you'll find plenty of people with stun guns and pepper spray. But I know people who have been sexually assaulted, beaten with tire irons, stabbed by meth-heads breaking into their houses, and targeted for queer-bashing, and none of these incidents involved guns. Contrary to popular belief, most petty criminals in the US are not armed, both due to the difficulty of acquiring a real firearm and the consequences for being caught with one. Realistically-painted toy guns and knives are common compliance tools for muggers, burglars are typically unarmed, and the stats for defensive gun uses show that almost all criminals flee when confronted with lethal force. Even if criminals didn't have guns at all, we'd have reason for honest citizens to be armed, because it gives them an advantage over their attacker(s), especially when there's a disparity in numbers or physical strength. The idea that civilian use of guns in self-defense is the product of an arms race between law-abiding citizens and criminals is basically a myth.[/quote]
This is useful stuff to know

[quote]
One of my friends from college works in a sketchy part of her city. She doesn't carry a handgun because criminals on her route might have guns, she carries a handgun because she's afraid of being raped. The fears that drive people to pursue effective means of self-defense have much less to do with what criminals are carrying than the presence of criminals in the first place.[/quote]
I suppose it makes sense from here point of view to take the best legal defence weapon. Like if you're at a buffet you might as well take a pile of the nicest food you can find.

[quote]
No worries. Our countries are very different in many ways and these kinds of direct comparisons help reveal where our assumptions may be erroneous- for example, differences in police response times as above.[/QUOTE]
Ye your stuff about police is eye opening and saddening. Also the whole gun market being saturated thing makes me doubt anything can be done anyway. Cheers